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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955463">A Friend</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibisUnleashed/pseuds/ChibisUnleashed'>ChibisUnleashed</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>RotG Halloween 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rise of the Guardians (2012)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Horror, I did the spoopy!!!, Space AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:53:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955463</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibisUnleashed/pseuds/ChibisUnleashed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For ROTG Halloween 2020: Day 10</p>
<p>Alone in space, Jack waits.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>RotG Halloween 2020 [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967113</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Friend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you, Sylph, for hosting RotG Halloween 2020!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was dark.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was always dark, out here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It had been more than a week since the station was attacked, and Jack couldn’t know if anyone had received their distress calls, or his own, since. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It had been an act of desperation to crawl into this capsule. An act of instinct to initiate launch. The station was being torn to pieces by some unknown… </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>tendrils of deep black crawling along the walls and creeping into the crevices only to rip away whole chunks of the technology and machinery that kept them all alive. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack had no idea what became of his friends. If they had been on a deck that was destroyed before they could leave it. If they had been running for a capsule like this one only to find all of them gone. If they had made it to a capsule, and were just floating out in space like he was: alone, anxious, a little crazy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The capsules didn’t have rear viewports. Being in one now, Jack considered that a huge oversight. The first several hours after launch, Jack had desperately wanted to know what was happening behind him. He had pressed himself to every window he had, trying to see past the end of his little boat, but the angles were all wrong and Jack had no idea, then or now, whether the station was even still in one piece. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack felt a small stirring of hunger and slipped the last of a stick of jerky into his mouth. The capsule had rations enough to keep him alive for at least a month, and Jack was doing his best to stretch them even further. The generator hummed constantly, filtering his air and waiting for commands, but Jack had nothing to ask of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The noise had been so annoying at first, before Jack got used to it. The beeps of life supporting machines used to be so loud, but now all Jack heard was the silence. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He floated in the middle of his capsule, drifting aimlessly in time with his tiny world around him so as to seem like he wasn’t moving at all. The stars were so distant, they didn’t look to be moving at all, and their light… it barely reached him here.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack left the capsule barely illuminated to preserve power. If he focused on a window and ignored the sharp shine of the barest of light reflecting off mechanical corners, he could almost imagine the capsule wasn’t even there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That it was just him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Alone in space. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except for the whispers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When the hums and the beeps and the whirrs faded out, when the silence was total and all encompassing, when Jack was almost sure this was just a dream and he was already gone, there would come a slip of sound.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took a long time for Jack to come to accept that he wasn’t hallucinating. Time didn’t mean anything anymore, and without the onboard clock, Jack wouldn’t know what day it was. He slept when he was tired, or when he was tired of being, and woke to more dark, endless dark, so the idea that he might be making things up just to be less alone was incredibly reasonable, all things considered. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he wasn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It always started so quiet, barely discernible from the rest of the white noise. It took forever, or it took Jack really </span>
  <em>
    <span>trying </span>
  </em>
  <span>to hear it, but they would get louder. Silk on a mattress, water on a slide, there would be the slightest rustle, then a rush, then, eventually… a voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>To say Jack flipped his shit the first time he heard it would be an understatement, and Jack still wasn’t completely comfortable with it now. Where could he run, though? A day spent pressed against the walls of his capsule, eyeing every corner and window, waiting for an attack that never came was enough to drain every self-preservation instinct right out of him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He could only spend so long on edge before the edge crumbled beneath him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he was found, he was found. If he died, he died. If it was starvation, or cold, or asphyxiation, or his stowaway… It hardly mattered. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Jack </span>
  <em>
    <span>wasn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>alone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was easy to dismiss as a trick of the eye, but once he came to terms with the idea that his ears weren’t lying to him, next was to believe what he was seeing. The darkness moved. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t like on the station, though. It didn’t creep and spread and invade and destroy, it just… settled. In the darkest corners of Jack’s tiny world, shadows shivered and tucked themselves into an endless pitch too black for his eyes to accept. He looked away from them, because watching just made him feel crazy, or like his eyes weren’t working properly, and after days spent in this cold, quiet, darkness… It was just…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well, it didn’t matter, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Jack floated, still as death, in the center of his dim capsule, waiting for whatever tomorrow would bring. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Something </span>
  </em>
  <span>touched him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack gasped and jerked his leg away so fast the muscle in his thigh cramped. He clamped his hand down on it, trying to ease the pain away, even as his attention darted around to every wall, every machine, every little light in his tiny little world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course he didn’t see anything. Of course he didn’t hear anything. But if he had seen something, and was hearing something, then the next step, </span>
  <em>
    <span>obviously, </span>
  </em>
  <span>was to feel something, wasn’t it? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack almost laughed at the inevitability of it all, but the pain in his leg was still too keen and his lungs didn’t have the air. His stowaway was getting bold and that just meant his time was running out, didn’t it?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nice to know he was still alive, kind of. He hadn’t lost all of himself to the darkness if his reflexes still worked, but in Jack’s head he knew they were futile. It might have been more merciful if he could have been out of his mind for this. Being completely aware as he faded to nothing didn’t sound like the kind of end he wanted for himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack stretched his leg out as the cramp loosened and swore to himself that he wouldn’t jump like that again. If he was going to die, it would be with courage in his heart, not flinching away like cowering could somehow stop this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack stared out of the viewport ahead of him, at the stars, at the dark, at the sheer size of space, and wasn’t surprised when </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>touched his ankle again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It slid all the way around, and Jack shivered at the light, silky, </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing </span>
  </em>
  <span>feel of it. He could sense the goosebumps rising in waves on his skin, up his shin, over his knee, across his thigh, all the way down his arms. His shoulders tensed, his back tensed, he clenched his hands to keep still because </span>
  <em>
    <span>whatever </span>
  </em>
  <span>this was, it would not get to hear him scream. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>inched higher, and Jack shivered again. His spine was locked in a straight line and Jack’s teeth pressed together, jaw clenched shut against his instincts. He could feel the cold of it through the insulated fabric of his suit, poking, prodding, gripping him as it pulled itself higher and higher on Jack’s body. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the time it reached his waist, Jack was properly scared. He could still feel it wrapped around his feet, but now it was clamping down on his hips, which meant it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>so much bigger </span>
  </em>
  <span>than Jack had thought it could be. How something this big had been hiding for days in the tiny corners of his capsule, Jack didn’t know. It was alien, foreign, Jack didn’t know </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>about it, except that it would kill him, and nobody was ever going to know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He refused to look. He wanted his last sight to be the stars, as cold and distant as they’ve ever been. He dragged stale air in through his nose and tried not to think about just how hard he was breathing, whether the air filters would be able to keep up, whether he was going to pass out and be blissfully unconscious for whatever happened next. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barely there ribbons of ice laced around Jack’s chest and it hurt to breathe. He gasped, then bit down on his own tongue to keep everything else inside. The darkness was all around him, strapped to his legs, tied around his arms, tightening against his torso and Jack wondered if the capsule had always been </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>dark or if he was already beginning to lose himself. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The universe had never been this silent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever sounds the technology of the capsule used to make, Jack couldn’t hear them. Everything was too far away, no longer a part of his world, the sound unable to travel through space to reach him. Jack heard the soft whisper of his own breath leaving his lips, and then everything was still. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack hadn’t heard real wind in a very long time, but this was like that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Hello. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t jump. His body was so tense, so tight, that there wasn’t any fluidity left for jumping. Jack held his breath, and waited.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But nothing came.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack was startled to realize he could hear the beeping of life support systems again. The air rushed out of his lungs in one huge, surprised breath. He was still breathing. Why was he still breathing? Suddenly the aching of his clenched hands broke through the dulled senses of his fear, and Jack stretched his fingers out, instinctively trying to relieve it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then he froze, because as soon as his hands were open, the chill rushed in. Soft nothingness pressed into his palms and threaded between his fingers and </span>
  <em>
    <span>held. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack waited.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Nothing came.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack stared out at space and wondered what the fuck was going on. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The voice had said hello. It had never said anything before, but now it said hello. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack sucked in a breath, hoped this wouldn’t be the last word he ever said, and whispered, “Hi?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing </span>
  </em>
  <span>wiggled against his skin and Jack shuddered at the feeling of it. Was it happy? Or agitated? Would Jack die before he knew?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You’re warm. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took Jack several seconds to realize his jaw had dropped. He quickly shut it, lest the darkness press in like it had with his hands. “You’re… cold.” He felt stupid saying it, but higher thought wasn’t available to him right now, and he had to say something, because he needed to hear what it would say back.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I know. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack blinked, surprised and shocked at this turn of events. What was he… supposed to do now? He wanted to ask if it was going to kill him, but somehow that felt like giving it ideas, so Jack asked the next thought on his mind. “What are you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ice wrapped more firmly around him, and Jack swallowed thickly to hold back his fear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>A friend. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack stared. At the darkness. At the vacuum. At the nothing and nobody around him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was lost in space, running out of power, running out of food, running out of air, running out of time. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one could hear him. No one could see him. No one even knew he was there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except this shadow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jack relaxed into its hold, accepting the inevitability of its company. It wasn’t like Jack could get away. It didn’t seem to want to kill him, for now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Jack drifted, still as death, in the center of his own tiny world. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Wanting nothing, awaiting everything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And the darkness was his friend.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Pitch is not a symbiote but if you wanna headcanon that he is, I can't stop you.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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